Tension drained out of Kestrel’s body, leaving him both alert and calm. Slowly he searched the
land again, looking toward the unborn dawn where stars paled, looking toward a horizon that
was still concealed by dark and distance.
A great white blister of light burst into searing incandescence along the eastern horizon.
Kestrel’s eyelids snapped shut even as his head turned aside, but darkness did not come to him.
The explosion had burned indelibly into his retinas, creating an afterimage of shimmering
purple. Pain scalded his eyes and he was afraid that he was blind, condemned to a lifetime of
seeing unearthly brightness, punishment for daring to look into the searing white center of light.
Long seconds hung like souls in judgement. He forced his eyes to open and learned he was not
blind, and then wished he were.
The raw white light was like a thousand suns burning as one, or a single new sun burning a
thousand times closer to earth.
White light thickened, turning into yellow, and a column of clouds churned frantically away from
the desert floor. A blazing circle of orange formed at the top of the boiling column. Nearby
clouds bloomed an eerie violet, lit from beneath by an uncanny dawn.
The silence was absolute, awesome, a world holding its breath while the future irrevocably
sheered away from the past. Even as Kestrel felt a sensation of warmth like sunlight over his
body, he realized that he was counting seconds, had been counting since the first searing white
instant, trying to measure his distance from chaos. With each silent second he numbered, his fear
increased. The explosion had been so far away that sound had not yet reached him. He had been
blinded, cowed, and he had yet to hear the column’s voice.
Nearly a minute later came the sound of sky compressed into a terrible rolling thunder. The
violent column of cloud still rose, carrying with it a distinctive crown. Kestrel felt the heat and
the light and the thunder and could not believe that he was at least ten miles away from the
explosion.
A vast exhalation of wind streamed over him, lifting his hair and pressing his shirt against his
sweating body while his lips soundlessly shaped incantations he had thought lost with childhood.
Only when he realized that the wind was coming from the east instead of the west did he really
believe what he had seen. At that same moment he also realized that his body was poised in
futile fighting reflex, one foot slightly forward, hands extended, fingers rigid.
But no man could fight the sun.
Kestrel stood alone on the dirt road, transfixed by the furious column that still clawed upward, a
column capped by an unearthly crown, silent again after the shock waves had expanded past him
out into the desert. Gradually the greenish light faded, superseded by a distant sun’s light
growing calmly, silently, out of the east.
As though freed by the second dawn, Kestrel spun toward his car, unable to think coherently,
knowing only that he had seen the future and it was American, not Japanese, a future without
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pride or ritual or tradition. Terribly new.
Moscow
5 Minutes After Trinity
(Excerpt from NKVD radio log. Decoded.)
AMERICANS EXPLODED ATOMIC BOMB. OUR AGENT WAS NOT AT TRINITY
SITE. DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
Alamogordo Test Range
Trinity Site Base Camp
25 Minutes After Trinity
The atomic cloud churned upward until it was eight miles tall, a pillar of gold burnished by
sunrise. Groves watched the culmination of Manhattan Project with a feeling of awe and
exhilaration that had not diminished in the twenty-five minutes since the atomic bomb had
blown apart itself, the night, and a square mile of desert. That huge, boiling column vindicated
every argument he had made, every dollar he had spent, every man he had broken with his
relentless demands. The atomic cloud was awesome, beautiful; it towered like a god over the
men who gathered at its feet.
“I wonder if Moses followed something like that to the Promised Land,” said one of the
technicians.
There was no answer, nor did the man expect one.
Dr. Oppenheimer looked at the awesome column and its tumultuous crown and was reminded
not of the Old Testament, but of the Bhagavad Gita: lam become death, the destroyer of
worlds.
Nearby, Lattimer measured the towering signature of the bomb. “Jesus Christ on a crutch. You
might as well tell me to keep the Mississippi River a secret.”
General Groves shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now.” His voice was confident, almost
exultant. “The war’s over. One of those bombs and Japan will be finished.”
Lattimer dragged on his cigaret and blew out smoke in a long sigh. “Maybe. But it will take at
least two atomic bombs. The Japs won’t believe the first one. Hell, / don’t believe it and the
goddamn thing is standing on my goddamn toes!” He sighed again and ground out his cigaret
butt. “At least two bombs, General. It’s just flat fucking unbelievable the first time.”
Groves looked at Lattimer, the voice of the past, a gun soldier who could not read the future
even when it consumed the very sky in front of him. Groves turned back to the mushroom cloud
that changed as he watched, transforming itself as it had transformed the world. He nodded his
head, satisfied. The general who had never been in a shooting war had accomplished something
all the gun soldiers in the world had not been able to do – he had given his country a victory.
Alamogordo Test Range
Trinity Site
33 Minutes After Trinity
(Top Secret memorandum to Secretary of war Henry L. Stimson.)
At 0530, 16 July 1945, in a remote section of the Alamogordo Air Base, New Mexico, the first
full-scale test was made of the implosion type atomic fission bomb. For the first time in history
there was a nuclear explosion. And what an explosion!
Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves
Washington D.C.
47 Minutes After Trinity
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(Cable sent to President Truman at Potsdam Conference. Not encoded.)
PATIENT OPERATED ON THIS MORNING. DIAGNOSIS NOT YET COMPLETE BUT
RESULTS SEEM SATISFACTORY AND ALREADY EXCEED EXPECTATIONS.
LOCAL PRESS RELEASE NECESSARY AS INTEREST EXTENDS GREAT DISTANCE.
DR. GROVES PLEASED. HE RETURNS TOMORROW. I WILL KEEP YOU POSTED.
END
(Reply. Not encoded.)
I SEND MY WARMEST CONGRATULATIONS TO THE DOCTOR AND HIS
CONSULTANT. END
San Francisco
1 Hour After Trinity
Sunrise rarely came to San Francisco in the summer, except in a gradual, almost imperceptible
increase of gray light diffused through fog banks couched on steep hills around the Bay.
Suspended in damp swirls of earthbound clouds, the Bay Bridge’s curves and thrusts of steel
supported traffic that thickened with the light.
Military traffic had once been treated with deference, but now olive drab trucks and Navy blue
Jeeps had to butt and shoulder with civilian vehicles, their passengers eager to leave the war
behind. The sound of the struggle tumbled off the bridge and down to Oakland’s dirty industrial
waterfront like a harsh rain.
The cacophony scraped Vanessa’s nerves. She moved restively in the back seat of her parked
car, watching through mist for the pale shape of a Chinese laundry truck. She adjusted the dark
blue scarf that hid her bright hair. From the outside of the car she was invisible.
The distant bob of a flashlight warned Vanessa that a night watchman from one of the nearby
factories was making another indifferent round. The presence of Vanessa’s car did not excite any
interest. There were always private and commercial vehicles parked at random along the street
and in parking lots, waiting for jobs or for gas ration coupons or money or spare parts. Vanessa
had watched each of the vehicles carefully when she first arrived, but had seen no one.
Absently, Vanessa rubbed her neck where the dark navy sweater chafed her skin. She wore no
makeup. Her face was a blank, an artist’s canvas ready to hold whatever would be painted on.
Tonight, a plain face suited Vanessa’s purposes. On other nights, a meticulously gilded face had
served her well. For herself, she did not care. She had been born into the wealth of an English
merchant family, but the predictable turns of such a life – marriage, children, church, bowing to
male desires six days a week and to a male God on the seventh – repelled her. Beauty had given
her a weapon against men, a weapon that she used with equal measures of cruelty and contempt.
When making and breaking romances no longer excited her, Vanessa had moved easily to affairs
of the mind. First Fabian socialism, then Marxism, then radical communism attracted her, each
one more exciting than the last, and more dangerous.
A man who called himself Melinkov had recruited Vanessa for the NKVD, using a combination
of ruthless intellectual and sexual domination. She rarely thought of Melinkov now; the memory
of her subjugation was uncomfortable. Yet she owed him much. He had taught her about human
weakness.
Slitted headlights flashed as a vehicle turned onto the waterfront. Vanessa sat back far enough
not to be picked out by the hard light. Traffic was thicker than she had expected for the hour, a
fact which pleased her. The laundry van and dark coupe would not attract any notice.
Blend in. Don’t stand out. That was what both Moscow and London had taught her. She never
forgot it.
Another set of lights, set wider and higher, brought Vanessa fully alert. The momentary surge of
adrenaline stained and then further bleached her cheeks as a pale van came toward her out of the
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brilliant halo of light from an unhooded streetlamp. Automatically, Vanessa ducked, her fingers
wrapped around the grip of a pistol hidden beneath the blanket that both concealed and
warmed her.
The van rattled by without slowing. On its side, the inelegant shapes of a plumber’s helper and a
Stilsen wrench crossed in unconscious parody of the U.S.S.R.’s Hammer and Sickle.
Slowly, Vanessa let out her breath and settled back into the seat. She allowed herself one brief
glance at the radium-bright face of her watch.
Five thirty-five.
They were late. No, not late. No time had been set for the rendezvous except after dawn and
before eight o’clock. She looked up from her watch. Her blue eyes were intent on the street, her
right hand warming the metal grip of her silenced pistol, waiting for Refugio.
Oakland, California
1 Hour 19 Minutes After Trinity
Ana looked at her watch for the seventeenth time since the last car had passed her hiding place
inside the flower truck that had once belonged to her father and now belonged to Refugio’s
cousin. Five forty-eight. Barely thirty seconds passed before she again peered at the glowing,
blue-green dial. Daylight was coming on, but even more slowly than time was passing.
Her hand moved to yank aside the dark curtain separating the back of the van from the front,
but she restrained herself. Her arm dropped to her side. Radium lines leered up from her wrist.
The second hand seemd frozen in place.
With a small sigh halfway between fear and impatience, Ana wriggled further back between the
tall wicker baskets that held thick bouquets of flowers. The rank odor of daisies and the
too-sweet smell of dying roses choked her.
She beathcd shallowly through her mouth, blaming the dense smells for her sweating palms;
nausea coiled like a snake in her stomach.
She hated being back in America. She hated the stale wet waterfront air. She hated the flower
van, its memories and its tightness and the darkness where roses overwhelmed her.’ Most of all
she hated herself for being terrified of the moment when Refugio would kill Masarek and drag
the blond woman into the truck.
How would Kestrel question the English spy?
Ana decided not to watch. She did not have to see any of it. Kestrel had told her only to bring
the van to this place and then hide in the back until Refugio came. The van’s open engine
compartment would answer any questions – obviously the vehicle had broken down and was
waiting for a tow.
She had done what Kestrel asked. Now she must wait, and she was very bad at waiting. “Just like
an American,” Kestrel would say if he could see her impatience. But she was not American. She
was Japanese, and therefore patient.
Ana leaned against the cold metal side of the van. The funeral smell of roses settled over her.
Trinity Site
2 Hours After Trinity
Lattimer signaled Groves urgently. The General, who had been congratulating project
technicians and enjoying his triumph, was tempted to ignore the sign, but something about
Lattimer’s tense posture compelled attention. Groves walked over to him.
“Well, what is it?”
“Admiral Purnell’s office, sir, in San Francisco,” said Lattimer, indicating the phone on the desk.
When Groves picked up the receiver and began to speak, Lattimer interrupted. “General, if I
were you, I would clear the whole area.”
Groves studied the security man, first puzzled and then alarmed. Lattimer’s anxiety was
contagious.
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“Sir,” said Lattimer. “There’s a problem with the Bronx shipment. Please let me clear the
room.”
Groves could feel the tension now, a tightness beneath his rib cage. With his right hand, he
unconsciously touched the left side of his chest, probing for the buried knot of fear.
He waited while Lattimer herded people out of the office. As soon as the door closed, Groves
turned to the phone.
“Groves speaking. What the hell is going on?”
The answer was fuzzed by the patchwork of connections between San Francisco and Trinity Site,
but Admiral Purnell’s words were clear.
“I was hoping you could tell me, General. You remember those mysterious packages you sent to
me for immediate delivery elsewhere?”
“Yes,” snapped Groves. The tension in his chest increased, making it hard for him to breathe.
“Someone apparently couldn’t wait for Christmas. One of the packages was opened.”
“The big one?” said Groves, thinking how easy it would be to sabotage the bomb’s
fifteen-foot-long casing with all its wiring, timers and fuses.
“No. The small package. The canister.”
“Jesus God!” Groves swallowed, trying to suppress his fear and fury. “Anything missing?”
“How would I know?” asked the Admiral coolly. “No one told me what was in the package in
the first place.”
“What’s left of the package?” Groves’ voice was thin with the effort of staying calm.
